


Year One: What All of Columbia Already Knows

by Ashling



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Enemies to Friends, F/M, Foggy is too damn cute, Friendship, Matt Murdock and Foggy Nelson at Columbia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-06 23:18:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16842433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashling/pseuds/Ashling
Summary: Matt's so oblivious to everything else that it takes him a whole two months to find out what all of Columbia already knows: Marci Stahl is his arch-nemesis.





	Year One: What All of Columbia Already Knows

**Author's Note:**

  * For [maplemood](https://archiveofourown.org/users/maplemood/gifts).



The very first day, when Matt Murdock steps foot on the campus of Columbia Law School, a cold wind is blowing and he harbors a strong suspicion that the following couple of weeks cement into a reality: there's no way he's going to graduate.

There's a pattern he's used to, in new schools: The lay of the land, lockers and water fountains and bathrooms. Teachers he likes, teachers he respects, teachers he can't stand. Good students, bad students, garden variety bullies. Acquaintances that'll get close to being friends but never quite make it because they can't get over pitying him. Acquaintances that'll get close to being friends but never quite make it because he won't let them. Foggy. 

Foggy's supposed to be the one constant, but Foggy misses the first week and a half of classes because his mom's sick, and though Matt does his best to warn him, it takes Foggy a good month before he accepts it: every day at Columbia Law feels like you've just missed a week and a half of classes. 

The pattern is broken, is the thing. The lay of the land is the sprawl of an entire university, and it's not just physical; it's secret clubs and centuries of history and no, it's not cute to wear a tie with teddy bears on it to class, even though it's a perfectly good tie. (Matt should know. He gave it to Foggy for Christmas.) The lay of the land is a complex web of people that have already all somehow met at a party or through their parents or during undergrad national Mock Trial competitions. And this is not the same as moving to a new neighborhood. This is more like moving to a different country. 

There are only professors he respects and is terrified of, and absolutely no professors that like him, because there are too many students in first-year classes for any professor to even remember his name, even with the cane and the glasses. There's only stellar students here and none of them are bullies. Not to him, anyway; he's not consequential enough to be bullied. It's like that, it's exactly like that.

In the eye of the hurricane, utterly self-absorbed in his terror, Matt's so oblivious to everything else that it takes him a whole two months to find out what all of Columbia already knows: Marci Stahl is his arch-nemesis.

When Kevin, Foggy's buddy from Constitutional Law, informs them of this, Matt's first reaction is complete bewilderment. "But why?"

Kevin shrugs. "Everyone knows she's after the Winthrop."

"The internship? But that's three years away."

"They almost always pick scholarship kids, though." Which leaves Kevin notably out of the running. "That makes you competition."

"Me?" Matt's doesn't know whether to be flattered or aghast. "But I'm dying out here!"

"We all are," Foggy says. "But you have that je ne sais quoi. That flair. That—"

"You're blind," Kevin says bluntly. "And old man Winthrop is only an honorary partner at the firm, but he still likes to take out the old social justice hobbyhorse and ride it. He'd be thrilled to have you."

Matt's stomach drops. He knows that it's probably just the sleep deprivation, he knows this, but he can't help but resent Kevin, who's plunging him back into familiar waters as casually as if it means nothing at all. Usually Matt's too busy to think about it for very long, but it has occurred to him on more than one occasion that he's only here because he looks good on a brochure. He can pass classes, barely, but that's not the same thing as being deserving.

"You've got it wrong," says Foggy, a little too cheerfully. "Matty's a genius. Anyone would be lucky to have him."

Matt closes his eyes, which isn't all that visible behind the dark glasses anyway. "You don't have to—"

"Shut up," Foggy says. His hand is warm on Matt's shoulder. "He doesn't know what he's talking about."

"I'm just poking your buttons, dude," Kevin says, after a brief, pregnant pause. Probably Foggy glaring daggers, bless him.

"It's fine," Matt says.

"You just need a nap," Foggy says.

"After this chapter," Matt concedes. But then he finishes the chapter and starts in on the next, no nap. 

Two days later, when Matt and Foggy are getting lunch at Brownie's Cafe, Matt bursts out: "I don't even know what she looks like." 

"Who?"

"My arch-enemy."

"Oh, Marci. Right."

Matt huffs, and Foggy grins. "You know her, you probably just don't remember her name. She's got platinum hair and she smiles like a shark."

"Sounds about right, but that still fits plenty of students here."

"Always carries the same leather briefcase everywhere."

"Again, that's practically ubiquitous."

"She's the one that went by us in the hall, my first day here, when Schroeder scolded me. Remember that?"

"No," Matt says, but then he does. Black pencil skirt and pearly blouse. Columbia fit her like a glove. He remembers, particularly, the way she said _you're in my way,_ voice precise and clear.

 _Shit,_ Foggy said, watching her go, and then Professor Schroeder had arrived sans his usual coffee, beyond grumpy, and gave Foggy the time of his life for a scorching five-minute rant on language before he began class.

Matt chuckles.

"What?"

"I remember now."

"You're smiling," Foggy says nervously. 

"It was funny."

"You're not gonna..."

"Mm?"

"You're not gonna try and date her, right?"

"What? No."

"Right, okay. It's just that every time there's a fantastically beautiful woman in the room who could destroy someone, you inevitably head straight for her. And who gets no end of trouble afterwards? Me. The innocent bystander."

"Foggy," Matt says, amused.

"What?"

"A fantastically beautiful woman?"

"She is!"

Now that Matt thinks about it, sure, that's fair, she is. He hadn't considered her in that light at all before, mostly because he'd lost interest in all flirting when he realized he couldn't flirt his way out of a ConLaw exam. But still. "I leave her to you," he says, dryly.

"Then why are you smiling?"

Honestly? Because he does remember her from class. Because it's kind of an honor to be her arch-nemesis. Because, just thinking about the way she spars with Henley in mock trial, the sly tip of her mouth, it reminds him that this stuff is supposed to be fun. This stuff _is_ fun. It's not just incomprehensible legalese, it's actual fights against actual people, and fighting is something he knows well and glories in.

"I have a nemesis," Matt says, and he likes it.

The next time he sees Marci is utterly confusing. He's just coming back from a coffee run, headed to the dorms, when he hears her in animated conversation with an elderly woman. The woman stands out because her perfume is not the kind of perfume you'd often smell here; it's neither stylish nor muted, it's floral and garish and cheap. But the elderly woman doesn't appear to notice this, or to care. She's laughing far too hard at something Marci says, reaching out to steady herself on Marci's arm. Marci puts her hand on the woman's shoulder in return, leans in, and murmurs something in her ear. Then they both explode into further peals of laughter. 

Matt's seen her laugh before, but not like this. She seems like a completely different person when she laughs. 

Then Marci tucks the woman's hand under her own arm and very slowly escorts her to the alumni affairs office, chatting blithely all the while. 

Matt follows them from afar, eavesdropping. It's a bad idea, but he can't help himself; he's fascinated. They're not talking about the law, or politics, or the school; they're not talking about shared family or shared friends; they're not even talking about the weather, or what to have for lunch. They're talking, at length and in detail, about how stupid cows are. Cute but stupid. With long, long tongues that'll tangle up your hair in an instant, and so needy they're like thousand-pound babies. What on _earth._

He can't resist asking her about it later. "Was that your grandma?"

"All my grandparents are dead. What are you talking about?"

"Sorry."

"What," she repeats impatiently, "are you talking about?"

"The old woman you were walking across campus yesterday."

"Are you following me, Matt?" She says it so amusedly, as if she considers this a compliment.

"I just noticed you in passing, and I guess I was surprised to see you laugh that hard."

Wrong words. She merely blinks, but he can sense the shift. "Charm and disarm. Take notes, next time you go full-on stalker. You might learn something."

"It was nice, that's all I meant."

"That woman has connections to one of the biggest immigration law charities on the West Coast. I was fishing for an internship," Marci snaps, and it's then that Matt knows he's got her. 'Cause that kind of barefaced straight talk is absolutely not her style. She likes charm and innuendo, not whatever this is.

He's fully aware he's playing with fire. "What's the name of the charity?" 

"The Lindgren Foundation." She says it like a challenge.

He grins crookedly. "I'm gonna Google that."

Marci rolls her eyes and shoulders her purse, pushing off the side of the building. "I'm gonna be late for office hours."

"Which professor?" he calls after her. She doesn't answer.

Huh.

Matt survives his first term, and then gets thrown into a class with the eccentric professor Govindrajan that mostly consists of endless rounds of mock trials, some based on historical cases, some contemporary, some made up for trademark and trust-busting laws set in what the professor calls "the not-so-distant future". It's every bit as fun as it sounds, except that it's as difficult as competing in an egg-and-spoon race in an ice rink while covered head to toe in olive oil. It's fucking tricky. 

The first term was a grind, memorization and plodding, scrabbling for any kind of a foothold. He knows things now. A little, and not very well, but he's got some shape of weapon in his hands.

If first term armed him, the second term taught him how to fight. Or, more accurately, Marci did. 

She's Columbia personified, and not just because of those tailored and matching sets of blazers and dresses. (How a scholarship girl got at those, he has no idea, but if Kevin hadn't told him, he'd never have guessed it.) She's Columbia personified because she defies all previous patterns of enemies that he's ever had.

It's not like he's never had a healthy academic rivalry before. Heck, he and Foggy probably would've had one if they hadn't already been too busy being friends. No, he's faced down kids trying to stuff themselves with as many AP classes as possible, kids with massive chips on their shoulder.

Usually, he disarms them with affability, and then goes in with ruthless amounts of memorization. Blindness slows him down in other ways, but it does help him focus when he needs it the most, and he has a brain like a sponge, soaks up details on the first read. Put talent and work ethic together, and it's always been enough.

Not with Marci, though.

Their first time they're in mock together, they're put as partners, she representing one company and he another, both companies suing a third together for monopolistic practices. Marci spends the entire first meeting referring to his fake company, FlexiPlate, as something incorrect. HexiPlate. RexiFate. PlexiSpate. It's strikes him as completely asinine until the second meeting, when he realizes she's doing it with purpose; she's not repeated a single incorrect name once. She's got an index of them all somewhere in her brain. FlexiLate. PlexiHate. Yeah, she's just found a way to annoy him and flex at the same time. FlexDeflate. Jesus Christ.

She keeps it up for the full three weeks of their assignment, which makes Matt want to throw her briefcase out a window on the top floor of the library. But they crush Kevin and Alma, easy.

They face off in the next case, and it's then that Marci teaches him that work and brains are not enough.

It's a hard lesson. He thinks he's going at 100, charming the student that's playing judge, piecing together the financial scheme that her client used to funnel kickbacks from lower-level salesmen at his company in exchange for a largely ineffective bonus system. He's got all the numbers in his head, all the relevant law, even has a star witness saved up in the form of one of the lower-level salesmen (also played by another student), who was originally just supposed to be a subject matter expert. He's all ready for the next class.

And then he gets there, calls the witness to the stand, and Marci says, "Your witness is not here."

But the student, is sitting in the front row. "I thought I heard Greg coming in," says Matt.

"He's here," Marci says. "But your witness isn't. He left the country yesterday, to visit his aunt in Argentina."

Matt gapes. "You can't just make stuff up on the spot like that."

"Anything that's within the bounds of reasonable reality, you can do," Professor Govindrajan. "And she didn't make it up on the spot. She asked me about it last week."

Matt's case limps through two more days before finally being put down for good. It's excruciating. Upon asking about the exact mechanics of how Marci did it, the Professor says merely that Marci advised her clients on exactly what would happen, should that particular witness take the stand. The students playing her clients, eager to get the promised two-point boost from winning, in turn asked the Professor if they could use some of their hypothetically ill-gotten gains to bribe the salesman out of the country.

"Isn't that illegal?" Matt says.

"She didn't tell them to bribe anyone, and they never told her what they did. It was very realistic."

He goes up to Marci before the next class, but before he can say anything, she holds up a hand. "In the real world," she says, "My clients don't go to jail. They go home to their families every night, and they sleep safe in their beds. Your clients are embarrassed in front of their own employees and out a good five to six million dollars, leaving you probably unemployed."

"And?" Matt says.

"That's utilitarianism, babe," she says with a bright smile. "Focus on the consequences." She walks past him into class before he can protest that John Stuart Mills probably would not have approved, actually.

After that, it feels like all his cases are against Marci, even though most aren't. They're training up for her. And for the first time in five years, he starts engaging his senses completely, fully, even when he's not mid-fight. He spent so long shutting out and ignoring everything because of the overstimulation, because of the ethical concerns of eavesdropping, because he likes to have a delineation between night and day. But now? Now he goes full-out. He even does research on heart rates, and starts using that information to turn himself into a semi-effective polygraph machine.

Even so, by the end of the year, she's still one case up on him. 

At year end, even a library recluse like Matt is allowed to get completely wasted.

So he does. He even asks Foggy to take him to a party that Kevin's throwing at his brother's frat house, and it's fucking great to not worry about a single thing for once because his bags are packed and there's no textbooks in them. It's so damn relaxing to just sit on a stained sofa and watch students dancing awkwardly to Katy Perry and to hold only three important dates in the calendar of his head: the time the bus picks him up tomorrow, Foggy's upcoming birthday, and the start date of his first internship, which is way too far away to worry him. It's so relaxing he doesn't even need to get completely wasted, or at least he can emotionally afford to take his time with it.

So when Foggy stumbles back in from the hallway, lipstick smeared on his neck and collar awry, Matt's only tipsy, and greets him with a big welcoming smile.

Foggy drops down on the sofa next to Matt.

"What's up, man?" Matt says, clapping Foggy on the shoulder affectionately, then passing him a full can of beer so cold it almost hurts to hold for too long.

"I finally did it," Foggy says, wearing an expression close to awe.

"Lost your virginity?"

"No, Jesus. Just. I was chasing this girl for the longest time. And then it just happened. It literally just happened. Oh my God."

"Yeah?" Matt says. "Why didn't you tell—"

Marci glances at them before she wanders out onto the back patio. It's quick, but her lipstick is smudged, and three beers isn't nearly enough to keep his brain from matching things up.

"Matt?" Foggy says. "Are you mad?"

"No," Matt lies.

"At me?" And that comes out small and a little bewildered, 'cause Matt's been mad at him many times but it's usually about dumb stuff at 2am and they get over it fast. It's nothing soap opera.

"No," Matt says, and that's not a lie. He turns and looks Foggy in the eye, angry with himself for letting something so petty make Foggy feel anything less than a superstar friend, which Matt is fully aware Foggy is, after all that whining, not to mention the thing in third grade.

"Hey." Matt does his best to go from gentle to jubilant. "I'm just a sore loser, but this is great! You always said she was stunning, and you deserve to have some fun after a year like that."

"Fun. Yeah," says Foggy, in a voice that implies that words don't do justice to the amount of fun that was had. And then: "Do you think she'll call me?"

"I don't know that much about—" Matt begins in a voice that is studiedly neutral.

Foggy cuts him off with a wave of the hand. "Whatever, man, it was good. I'm not going to overthink it." Matt can clearly see Foggy beginning to overthink it right before he chugs the rest of his beer. They look at each other, and laugh, and then Matt goes off to find them more drinks.

In retrospect, Matt should not have bought a ticket for the bus at 7:45am, but the ticket had been really cheap and he'd been in a hurry to get the hell out of there. He regrets it now because of the hangover. And the early morning chill. And because Marci is the only other person at the bus stop.

He sits in headachey grumpiness until 7:45 passes, and 8:00 passes, and 8:15 passes, and the bus may never show up and he can't stand it anymore.

"Couldn't you leave Foggy alone?" he bursts out. 

She turns and looks at him with bleary eyes. "What?"

"He's a good guy. Maybe one of the only ones at Columbia."

"You don't include yourself in that group?" she says, voice arch but also a little prickly.

"He deserves someone who's going to treat him well."

"He didn't seem interested in an engagement ring." Marci's eyes narrow slightly. "You think this is about you?"

And yeah, now that she says it out loud, he realizes how ridiculous it sounds, but he's still in a state of deep annoyance, so he plows on. "Why did you kiss him, then?" he says, and it's a sign of his very small self-preservation instincts that he doesn't say _have sex with._

"Maybe you _are_ an asshole after all," Marci says. Is that a hint of disappointment?

"That's not an answer."

"Come on, you should know why anyone would want to be with Foggy. You get it more than anyone else does. If you weren't straight, you'd probably be his boyfriend by now, right?"

"I'm not straight," Matt says, too fired up to notice that he just outed himself until a belated five seconds later. Then he makes a face: _kill me._ Not 'cause he's ashamed of it to her, but because this is not how he was trying to handle it while at law school. 

"I'm not either," she says, after a second.

"Then—"

"For once in your life, can you try thinking before you speak?"

They sit in silence for a second, defrosting. Then Matt says, "Me too."

"Well, there you go." She's almost friendly, saying that.

After a few moments, Matt half-smiles.

"What?"

"Just...this woman I used to know, Sister Maggie, would tell us to make up and say one nice thing about each other."

"Can't imagine anyone making you quell a fight."

"Oh, you've never met a nun."

"Well?" Marci says expectantly. 

"Why do I have to say something nice about you? You already know."

"I'm not Sister Maggie. I don't make the rules."

"You're more devious than I am."

"That's backhanded," Marci says immediately.

"No, because it makes you more successful than I am."

"Fruit of the poisonous tree. Still based on a backhanded compliment."

"That's not what fruit of the poisonous tree means," says Matt.

"Get over yourself."

"I'm trying."

"Are you?"

"You're my favorite non-Foggy person here."

Marci huffs. "Well, I didn't tell you to turn from backhands to mere flattery."

"I'm not lying."

As Marci processes that, the bus arrives. They both get up from the bench, stretching out muscles and heaving up suitcases. 

"Your turn," Matt says, as they walk towards the bus.

"You want a compliment?"

"Turn and turnabout is fair play."

"You sometimes have the diction of a seventy-year-old World War Two vet, you know that?"

"Are you stalling for time?"

"You have a good friend," Marci says, voice steady and verging on serious. "Not everybody has that. So that's good taste, and being lucky on top of it. Hold onto him."

Before Matt can unpack that, she's chucked her bags in the underbelly of the bus and has ascended two steps into it. 

Well. Next year will be interesting.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Holidays, maplemood! Loved your Matt & Marci prompt so much, especially the idea that they were academic rivals. I hope you like it! (This piece stands on its own, but I love their dynamic so much I feel a Year Two and Year Three coming on...)


End file.
